Opening Keynote: A Trail Across the Rural Pacific Northwest

Bruce Cain, the Eccles Family Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West, and Hope Eccles, advisory council member of the Center, welcomed attendees to the Eccles Rural West Conference 2016. David M. Kennedy, the co-founder of the Center, spoke about the origins of the Rural West Initiative and took attendees on a flyover tour of the emerging Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail.

Rural West Conference Volume

Common Issues of the Rural West

Edited by David B. Danbom

Foreword by David M. Kennedy

Published in cooperation with the Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University

The University of Utah Press has published Bridging the Distance, a book by the Rural West Initiative of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. Edited by the distinguished historian David B. Danbom and with a foreword by Center co-founding director David M. Kennedy, the book explores the Rural West across four dimensions: Community, Land, Economics – and defining the Rural West itself. The book is the result of work presented at the first Conference on the Rural West, which took place in Ogden, Utah, in October 2012.